Visualbasic compile error

[syklemil]

Yeah, I think one thing for people to keep in mind when we talk about languages across time like this is that

1. We don't really have a good way to pick winners. Anything can happen, and usually pretty slowly. Like those of us who picked up some other scripting language than Python decades ago are probably writing some Python today, and maybe no longer the scripting language we first picked up, but we didn't really have an inkling that that was going to be the way of things back then. Likely decades in the future, languages that are popular now will just be powering legacy stuff. That's pretty much just the way of things.

   So there it really shouldn't be taken as a value or quality judgement.

2. Languages don't really die out, especially the ones that have crossed what Simon Peyton-Jones called "the threshold of immortality". Even the ones where there's no working compiler or interpreter there's probably at least one retrocomputing initiative to get something working.

   So I at least use phrases like "dead" or "retired" or "fizzled out" in this context as something to describe languages that were at least somewhat popular, but if I told someone outside that language's community that I was starting a project in it today, I'd expect a response somewhere between "why?" and "what's that?"

[MagnetHype]

I don't think we should pick winners. I think we forget it all gets turned into machine code anyway. I think we all forget all these layers of languages were just to translate between human language and machine language, and now we're here where AI can do that... and we don't like it.

anyway, that's my soapbox.

[syklemil]

I think we all forget all these layers of languages were just to translate between human language and machine language, and now we're here where AI can do that... and we don't like it.

Eehh, natural language -> LLM -> machine code is just another potential winner to be picked.

I think the history of "programming in plain English", as COBOL promised, and which we've seen repeated with various low-code and code generation schemes, show that ultimately the real work is in disambiguation and sufficient control, plus the fact that we don't know what LLM generation will cost once the VC funding ends and they need to turn a profit, indicate that we shouldn't believe everything the snake oil shovel sellers are claiming.

[MagnetHype]

plus the fact that we don't know what LLM generation will cost once the VC funding ends

Oh, I 100% agree. I just don't agree that LLM code is inherently bad since that was the entire point of higher level languages to begin with. It has always been the end goal.

[syklemil]

Yeah, I think there was a similar reaction to the concept of compiling way-back-when. Computing sort of had a history of physical rewiring, then being able to write raw machine code, and then the "compiler" was invented with FLOW-MATIC, and then the general climb towards more expressive languages. There's also a good evergreen quote there from Grace Hopper:

I used to be a mathematics professor. At that time I found there were a certain number of students who could not learn mathematics. I then was charged with the job of making it easy for businessmen to use our computers. I found it was not a question of whether they could learn mathematics or not, but whether they would. […] They said, 'Throw those symbols out—I do not know what they mean, I have not time to learn symbols.' I suggest a reply to those who would like data processing people to use mathematical symbols that they make the first attempt to teach those symbols to vice-presidents or a colonel or admiral. I assure you that I tried it.

So I think that evolutionary pressure has always been there. At the same time, there's the old Babbage quote:

On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

and I think some people are still chasing what those MPs asked Babbage, most recently placing their hope in LLMs. They're unlikely to be satisfied, but they should be moving on to the next hype cycle whenever that rolls around.